


everybody leaves so why, why wouldn't you?

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (related to the aforementioned A+ parenting), 5+1 Things, Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brienne is the Best, Child Neglect, Childhood Friends, Dyslexia, F/M, Friends to Lovers, I Don't Even Know, Idiots in Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, REALLY I SWEAR IT STARTS ANGST BUT IT'S RIDICULOUS FLUFF AT THE END, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting, Wakes & Funerals, minor j/c but it's there for a second and for plot reasons I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13413414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: Or: five people who left Jaime Lannister at various points in his life and one who was there all along.





	everybody leaves so why, why wouldn't you?

**Author's Note:**

> ... yes, I HAVE OTHER SHIT I SHOULD BE WORKING ON. Except I thought this thing up and it really wanted to exist and I might have spent one day angsting over this and - I don't even know. Here you go, have 16k of ridiculous angst which ends into THE FLUFFIEST SHIT IN EXISTENCE I haven't tagged a nice thing that happens at the end because SPOILERS even if I think everyone will guess in the beginning, but hey, I tried.
> 
> Also: the J/C is in part five and it lasts exactly one paragraph and it ends right there, so in case you want to skip, you know where it is and you can probably feel it coming. JUST, HERE YOU GO, it was months that I didn't write a thing without a prompt now I can go back to actually prompted stuff. Peace. *saunters back downwards*
> 
> Obviously, they belong to GRRM and the title is from the gaslight anthem as it usually is 50% of the time /o\

 

1.

 

When he’s told, _your mother didn’t make it_ , Jaime doesn’t understand what his father means at once.

“She – she didn’t make _what_?” He asks, looking up at him, wondering why he looks so angry (more so than usual anyway) and why would he say that when he assured both him and Cersei that their mother was only feeling poorly and she had to go to the hospital for a few days but then she would be back.

She _had_ told him she would be back as she fixed his hair back in place because it was all over his eyes, while she smiled at him and told him she’d come back home before he knew it, and instead she’s been away one week and now –

Cersei’s elbow hits his side sharp enough that he wants to yelp, but doesn’t because now that wouldn’t be _proper_ , would it?

“He means she’s _dead_ , Jaime,” she says with the tone of someone who can’t believe he couldn’t put two and two together at once, but it’s not as if he knew what _that_ meant, and –

Oh.

Their father shakes his head and doesn’t quite look at the two of them. “Incompetents. I’ll sue,” he says under his breath, and then – “I need to go make arrangements for the funeral. You can go see her.”

He doesn’t say, _if you’d like_.

\--

He spends the next three hours in the hospital’s burial chamber, sitting on one of those horribly uncomfortable chairs and staring at his mother who’s lying down on one of those horrid, white hospital beds. At least she’s wearing the clothes she had when she checked in, he thinks, even if it shouldn’t matter, but _something_ tells him that it would have been worse if she had been wearing scrubs. Their driver is outside the door on orders to _not_ let them out, and she’s lying there with skin so much paler than he remembers it being, her golden hair neatly combed and her hands crossed on her stomach.

He wants to puke.

He _feels_ like doing it.

He slips his hand from Cersei’s, leaving her sitting on the chair, and heads for the bathroom and _does_ , and then he’s just glad that he’s tall enough to reach the tap and drink _some_ water so he can spit the taste out of his mouth.

He comes back inside the room and feels sick all over again, but says nothing. Cersei merely stares at him and shrugs.

“Father wouldn’t have done that,” she says, and he can hear that she feels proud she’s not feeling the need to do it.

He wants to reply, _I’m not Father_ , but he doesn’t think it would help much. He wishes he could just go home and – and not _think_ about this, and he wonders who’s even looking after his brother who most likely _won’t_ remember their mother, and he can hear Father arguing with one of the doctors outside, and even if then Cersei scoffs again and grabs his hand as if she’s paying him a favor, he feels like everything’s _wrong_.

She said she would never leave either of them, so _why did she_?

\--

“I’m expecting you _both_ to read this at the funeral,” his father says, and then he hands Jaime a pristine white sheet with the company logo in the top left half corner.

Jaime looks down at it and feels cold sweat forming all over his forehead – it’s a _full_ page, and it’s printed so small he has to scrunch his eyes more than once to actually focus on it, but then –

Then it’s –

Exactly the same as what happens whenever he tries to read _anything_ , never mind the reason why his grades in school are the same as his sister just because he knows their teachers are scared shitless that their father might sue the school or _something_ if he does poorly.

(Mother had insisted that they should not be homeschooled, he heard that conversation, and Father relented because he could never deny her anything, and Jaime’s pretty sure that their school doesn’t want to miss on the extra _donations_ Father gives them regularly.)

Still, one thing is reading school material where _more or less_ he can guess things around and ignore the fact that the damned letters look similar and sometimes seem to jump around the page and no one cares about his terrible handwriting and he knows that however much he fucks it up, no one will ever mark it badly.

One thing is reading half of his mother’s funeral sermon in front of his entire family and her entire family and his father’s work associates and however many people will be at her funeral with Cersei reading the other half and most likely having to do it _after_ her, because of course his part would be the second half.

Cersei’s already skimming her half with her eyes, nodding here and there.

He feels like throwing up all over again.

He takes a deep breath.

“I don’t know if I can,” he starts, hoping it’s conciliatory enough –

His father sends him a look so sharp he immediately shuts up. “Jaime, if it’s about that ridiculous _letters jumping on the page_ excuse, you can forget it. I am _expecting you both to read this_ and you better do it two days from now. Understood?”

He wishes he could say he _can’t_. He looks at Cersei, who merely smiles and shrugs.

No help on that front, of course.

“Yes,” he says, and it tastes like his mouth had just after he vomited in the hospital room.

His father leaves.

“Jaime, _come on_ , that’s just a lame excuse,” Cersei says a moment later.

“It’s _not_ ,” he tells her, figuring that at least she should listen. “I swear, it’s too small, I can’t –”

“If _I_ can,” she says, “so can you.” And she says it with such ease, the same way she says that they’re twins, of course they can do the same things, and –

It’s not worth it to push it, he figures, and so he lets her leave and goes back to staring at the damned piece of paper.

It doesn’t make much more sense, and she died _yesterday_ and he only has two days to make sense of this, but he’ll manage. He supposes. He _hopes_.

\--

The next day, he’s sitting on a bench in the nearby park – he’s managed to ditch both their nanny _and_ their driver with an excuse and hopefully they won’t find out that instead of going to the school library to _learn his speech_ he went somewhere else –, he’s still looking down at the damned jumbled mess of letters on the piece of paper and his eyes _hurt_ for how much he’s not figuring it out.

The funeral is a day from now, he’s barely isolated some fifteen words that somehow make sense in that thing but it’s printed so _small_ he’s not even sure of that, he has no idea what he’s even supposed to be saying, and he thinks of how his mother would tell him that not everyone learns to read well as soon as they start and he would get better with time, for sure, and he’s burst out in tears before he even realized it.

 _No_ , he thinks, immediately putting the sheet on the side – if he gets it wet it won’t be a very good thing now, will it – and then realizes he can’t really stop even if he _should_ , and he knows his father wouldn’t like _this_ either because _real men don’t cry_ , but –

But she’s _dead_ , and he doesn’t know how to even begin reading that hellish thing, and –

“Uh, Jaime? Are – can I help you?”

 _What_ –

He wipes at his eyes angrily and looks at the free side of the bench. Well, now it’s not anymore because someone else is sitting on it.

Namely, that girl in the grade below his at school who’s so tall she looks like she’s two grades ahead of hers – what was her name? Brianna? It started with a _B_ , he’s sure of that, but he can’t recall it right now. They were paired together in the same team in a few shared PE classes a few times because they’re both good at football, or so it seems, and she actually _is_ way better at that than half of his male classmates, and of course she remembers who he is, since he did compliment her on her skills both the two times they played together and they actually made a pretty decent team on field.

His first reaction is telling her to fuck off before she has anything more embarrassing to tell other people about his current situation, but – but she looks _worried_ , and he’s seen enough of her disrupting fights in her grade and the next _three_ to know she wouldn’t do this to make fun of him.

Right. _Brienne_ , that was the name.

“Dunno,” he shrugs, “but thanks for asking.”

He figures she’ll leave. How can she help him, anyway?

She _doesn’t_ go, though. “I – I know we don’t talk much at school, outside the football stuff,” she presses on. “But you look really sad. And no one cries like that if they don’t have a problem.”

He shrugs. “My mom just died,” he confesses, even if he figures she’ll know already. He doubts the entire school wouldn’t know.

“I heard,” she says. “I’m sorry. She looked very nice. From when she came to get you, I mean.”

“She was,” he says, feeling slightly better for that. “Thanks. I guess. But – that’s not the problem. I mean. It’s _the_ problem, but not the one I have right now.”

He looks up into her large, blue eyes – they’re pretty, he thinks. The rest of her really is _not_ , she does indeed look more like a boy than a girl except for the eyes, but right now he couldn’t really care less, not when she’s the first person who’s looked at him _nicely_ since Mom died. Not counting Tyrion, of course, but he _doesn’t_ know she died.

“Okay,” she says. “And what is the one you have right now?”

“It’s stupid,” he replies. Suddenly he doesn’t want her to know, because what if she assumes he’s also making excuses?

“My dad says stupid questions don’t exist and it’s better if you ask them,” she shrugs. “Wouldn’t it be the same with your _problem_?”

He can see the reasoning, and for a moment he envies her because certainly _his_ father has a whole other heap of opinions about stupid questions (mainly, that they exist and he doesn’t want any to come from the mouths of anyone he fathered). And – she’s been friendly until now, and they were friendly in school, so – why not?

He takes his speech and hands it to her carefully. “I’m supposed to read that at the funeral,” he says.

She takes it and unfolds the piece of paper – she squints for a moment, but then obviously goes through the entire thing, wincing a bit every few lines.

“Wow,” she says, “it’s – depressing,” she finally says.

He almost wants to laugh at that. “I’m sure it is. It’s just, I – I can’t _read_ it.”

“What do you mean, you can’t read it? It’s because she’s gone too soon –”

“No, no, I wish. I _can’t read it_. Same as I can’t read most stuff.”

He expects her to laugh.

Instead she moves slightly closer. “ _How_ can’t you read? You go to school.”

“I mean, it’s not that I _can’t_ in theory. That’s fine. It’s just – if I look at that, I can’t – some letters are the same, some others seem to just move around the page, and it’s so _small_ and I can’t figure it out. School books are – they’re written larger, I guess. I get by, more or less. But _that_? I can’t. I just can’t.”

She takes it in, and for a moment he’s sure she’ll laugh. But then –

“But if you can’t, why does he want you to read it?”

Now _he_ wants to laugh. “He thinks I’m being lazy or faking it. I tried to tell them but he won’t hear it and my sister thinks I’m being lazy, too, and Mom said it’d come naturally at some point but it’s _not_.” He wants to cry again.

Brienne just _looks_ at him.

“We should ask my brother.”

“ _What_?”

“My brother. He’s sitting there, the one reading on that bench.”

Jaime looks in the direction she’s pointing at – there’s a teenager reading some comic book and glancing at them once in a while. Also very tall. Also with hair the same pale blond as hers.

“And what would he know?”

“He had a classmate in school who I think had the same problems as you? Or something similar. I dunno, we should ask.”

“What? Really?”

“I _think_ , it was two years ago or something. Let’s ask him.”

Jaime nods at her and follows her until she runs up to her brother, who, up close, definitely looks like her, except prettier.

“Galladon?” She asks him. He puts his comic book away.

“Yeah? You need anything?”

“ _I_ don’t, but _he_ could,” she says, looking at Jaime, who awkwardly introduces himself before clearing his throat and telling him what’s the problem all over again. At least he doesn’t look judging, same as his sister, and he listens to the entire explanation before he nods as if he _does_ have a vague idea of what he’s talking about.

“Right,” he said, “there was this guy I knew in middle school who I think said he had the same problems when he was – how old are you again?”

“Eight,” Jaime replies.

“Right. More or less your age. Which is why he had some extra teacher helping him out – I’m sure he was dyslexic or something, but he never really talked about that in depth and we weren’t friends or anything. But that could be it, I guess.”

For a moment, Jaime is completely floored at the prospect of actually _putting a name to the damned thing_ , and then Brienne perks up. “Can I have the keys?”

“What – to the house?”

“We could go upstairs and check on Dad’s computer if there’s anything we could do about it.”

“Brienne, I think you need doctors for that.”

“Yeah, sure, but he has a thing to read in public tomorrow and there’s no time for that _now_ , is it?”

Galladon smiles fondly at his sister and hands them the keys. “Fine. Either stay there until I’m back or lock the door and come back here if you’re done before I am, all right?”

“You’re the best!” She says, taking them. “So,” she tells Jaime, “are you coming?”

“What – to your house?”

“Sure. It’s right around the corner. In theory, I’m not supposed to use the internet when Dad’s not home, but I’m sure he’d understand.”

Jaime would just like to ask her, _why are you even helping me_ , but he won’t be here splitting hairs over it especially when he wants to cry in relief at the prospect of knowing what’s fucking wrong with him, and so he follows her up to her flat. It’s on the first floor of the house around the corner, indeed, and it’s small but tidy – enough for three people, he supposes. She immediately leads him to a small room who looks like a tidy office, and is most probably her father’s, and where a desktop is sitting in the corner. Probably the only one around the house, he figures, but most people can afford _one_ , he figures.

“Right,” she says, “let me turn it on. By the way, I’m real sorry about your mother,” she adds. “I mean, mine died when I was three, so I don’t remember her much, but I’m sure it’s worse if you actually do.”

Jaime thinks it’s the first condolences he’s heard that don’t sound completely fake to his ears.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll – I’ll deal with it, I guess. Not by reading this in public.”

“Why would you _have_ to, anyway? And if it was _my_ funeral, I’d want people to say what they think of me, not read speeches.”

Jaime _does_ agree with that notion indeed, too bad he can’t go and tell his father now, can he?

She says nothing as she connects the desktop to the Internet, and then clicks on the Internet Explorer icon.

“Right,” she says, “he said dyslexic. Let’s see,” she types in, and then clicks on some link. He waits, not even trying to glance at the screen.

“So,” she goes on, “you’re saying the letters sometimes move around, you can’t see the difference between letters that look similar and sometimes they look… flipped or something?”

“Yes to the first two, not to the last one.”

“Right. Sometimes they might be all bunched together and you can’t connect them with how they should sound?”

“The first one just if it’s written really small. Like _now_. The last one – I couldn’t in, like, first grade. Now I more or less can. More or less.”

“Well,” Brienne says, “it says here that if you have this you might do some of these things and not others, but seems to me like you might really have it.”

“Great,” Jaime groans. On one side, he’s relieved that he just knows what the hell might be wrong with him. On the other – “I mean, thanks for helping me figure it out, but if I tell my father it won’t really help much.”

“Why?” She asks. “He _should_ help you out, if you have a problem.”

He shrugs. He wonders, _should I tell her_?

Then he decides why not – she’s been more helpful than his entire family put together at this point. “My brother, uh, he’s – let’s just say you’re taller right now than he’s ever going to be. It’s, like, genetic. My father took it so well he barely even sees him. I mean, goes out of his way to _not_ look at him. You think he’ll be thrilled to find out I’m – that I have _a problem_? That he can’t get rid of with money? Anyway, never mind that. Just – does that – does the internet have some idea of how I could at least read _this_ before tomorrow?”

Brienne thankfully doesn’t say anything about what he’s just fessed up and instead reads along.

“Not here,” she says, “but maybe somewhere else. Let me check.” She carefully types something in the bar and opens another link. She scrunches her eyes.

“This is about _adults_ ,” she says, “so I don’t know, but it says adults who have it might be very good at talking and have a good memory? Wait, you _do_ have a good memory.”

“What – how would you know?”

She rolls her eyes. “You were in the school play last year. The one about King Arthur. Where you were playing Galahad. They didn’t take me because I didn’t look _any part_ according to Mrs. Florent.”

“What? Really?” Jaime didn’t even have to audition; _she_ came to ask him and Cersei.

“Well, you did learn those lines, didn’t you?”

“Er, yeah. Just, I asked some other kid to read them for me though. I paid him.”

“Right. And then?”

“Well, they weren’t _too_ hard. I just spent like, one hour with him until I knew that by heart and then even if I had to _read_ them to check, I knew what I had to say.”

At that, she suddenly perks up. “Then I could read this to you until you know it.”

“It’s _long_ ,” he protests.

“It’s also very boring and says the same stuff over again. If you’d like, while we do it I can type it up for you, just larger, so it looks better.”

She looks _entirely serious_.

“What – really?”

“Sure.”

“But – it would take up the entire afternoon.”

“So what?” She shrugs. “I don’t – I was in the park because it’s nice out, but it’s not like I have any friends to meet.”

Given how nice she is and how many fights she breaks in school all the damned time, _that_ comes as a surprise. “What? Really?”

She shrugs. “Most girls don’t like me. Everyone thinks I’m weird. And I break up fights because it’s _right,_ but I hear people calling me a freak, I’m not an idiot. And – I invited my entire class to my birthday party this year but no one came. So no, I don’t have people to meet.”

 _Look at that_ , he thinks. _Not too different from me,_ since he’s actually never thrown a birthday party for anyone. Well, they did, for _him and Cersei,_ and of course first it was all family and the only time they invited people from school it was all _her_ friends, and somehow he never was the center of the attention.

Same as at school. He tends to not look for it, and so people flock to his sister, but it’s fine. It’s not his fault if whatever he likes is not what others like and if every time he hangs out with someone it turns out they were Cersei’s friends first or it’s because they hope to get a lunch invitation at a mansion.

He moves closer to her. “I – if you’re sure, that’d be great. But you don’t have to –”

“It’s okay, I _want_ to. So, should I read it to you while I type it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

\--

It takes them _the entire afternoon_ , indeed, and the speech, now that she reads it, is boring and it says the same stuff all over, but after she has him repeating each line ten times and then two of them another ten, and then _three_ of them and so on, he’s sure he has a clue of what the entire thing’s supposed to say. It takes her an hour to type the entire thing in caps, and then she makes him choose a font that looks good to him and how large should it be, and it takes three pages when it’s printed out rather than the meager one he had, but like this – like _this_ , it’s a lot more readable than that insufferable horrid font from before. And then she underlines with a red pencil the parts that he apparently has more trouble remembering.

“So if you want to check on it tonight or tomorrow you can try and read out just those instead of the entire thing,” she says, and – it’s not a bad idea, he decides. It’s definitely _a lot_ better than it was six hours ago, though.

“That’s – that’s great,” he says, and he thinks he could cry. “I – thank you. Really, I couldn’t –”

“It’s fine,” she said. “And it beat spending the entire afternoon crying over myself in there, really. Let me know how it goes?” She asks, and he says he will and he _means_ it, and as he goes back home and slips back inside without anyone noticing he actually left for that long he feels slightly less miserable than he was before she walked up to him.

\--

The funeral is horrible, not that he had expected otherwise. Everyone is dressed in black and Jaime thinks she’d have hated it – she didn’t like black. She liked red. But red is not a _funeral color_ , he was told when he asked if he could at least wear a shirt that _wasn’t_ black. Even _his brother_ is dressed in some small tailored black suit that Jaime’s sure some poor tailor had to wing together in two days just for the occasion, good thing that he obviously doesn’t understand what’s going on. He’s nowhere near surprised when his father pretty much thrusts the poor kid at _him_ because he cries whenever he is with anyone else, and he wishes it could be enough to make him skip the speech, but _no_ , of course it’s not. He leaves Tyrion with his aunt as he steps up to the microphone with Cersei, who reads perfectly, of course, taking all the right pauses and looking so sure of herself in her tailored black dress.

He feels like he could suffocate as he takes her place, but he’s repeated the damned thing in his head for the entire night – when he wasn’t sleeping, the little he managed – and its boring, dull words flow out of his mouth without him barely needing to look at his _readable_ speech. He only does to check whether he should pause or stop, Brienne underlined those parts in blue, and by the end, Cersei’s looking at him as if she hadn’t expected such a good performance, and his aunt praises him for having actually learned it by heart, and he wants to say, _it wasn’t all on me_ , but never mind. They wouldn’t hear it, he thinks.

He still feels like he’s suffocating, though, and the first thing he does the moment they’re inside the car driving them back home, he gets rid of the small tie he had around his neck and eventually shrugs and passes it over to Tyrion, who’s – good for him – sitting quietly in the baby seat, oblivious to everything. He wishes he were, too.

“How did you learn that by heart if _you couldn’t read it_?” Cersei asks a moment later.

He shrugs. “I managed.”

“Oh, like you managed your lines at the school play last year?”

Of course she knew that. “Maybe,” he says.

She scoffs, muttering something about him doing things just to spite Father. Usually, he’d listen to her. Now, he really can’t bother.

\--

That evening, he slips out of his room after dinner, leaving from the window – good thing he’s at ground floor – and quietly walks up to Brienne’s apartment. It’s five minutes, after all.

There’s just one room with the light on. He considers locating the apartment on the intercom, but then he realizes he doesn’t remember her surname and what if her father is here and calls _his_ father?

He grabs a small stone from the ground and looks up – he’s sure that’s _her_ window. He throws it. It actually lands on the glass, and a moment later she’s opening it and looking down.

“Jaime?” She asks. “What –”

“You wanted to know how it went, didn’t you? I just, I didn’t remember the surname.”

“Wait,” she says, and a moment later the door buzzes open. He walks in and then up to the first floor where she has already opened the door.

“Get in,” she says, “I’m on my own.”

“Really? They leave you just like that?”

“Dad’s out for work and Galladon’s out with a couple friends, but it’s not like I could go anywhere. And anyway, the surname is Tarth.”

“Right. Sorry, I completely forgot. Anyway, it went fine.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Everyone was _impressed_ with me actually having learned it all.” He has to laugh at that, some. “Thank you, by the way. I – I couldn’t have done that otherwise.”

“I’m glad I helped out,” she says, smiling a tiny bit. She has crooked teeth, he can’t help but notice, but then again maybe she’s not old enough for braces even if she certainly _looks_ like it. “But you really should tell your father.”

He snorts. “Yeah, _no_. Now that I actually pulled that trick, he’s never going to buy that I didn’t read it myself. But I’ll get by. As usual.”

“You sound sad about it.”

He thinks, _should I tell her_?

Then he decides that she’s earned that. “Well, why do you think I have good grades? I get automatically whatever Cersei does because no one wants to lose my father’s contributes to the school funds. I feel like I’m cheating, but the one time I tried to explain that everyone assumed I was pretending it. I mean, I _want_ good grades, just – I’d like to deserve them.”

She nods. “That’s fair,” she agrees, “but it’s not _your fault_.”

For a moment, neither of them speaks, but then –

“Maybe – maybe we could help each other out?” She asks, tentatively.

“As in?” He replies, immediately interested.

“I guess that you’re behind with reading whatever, right?”

“Brienne, I think I’m not even caught up with _first grade_ reading, don’t _guess_.”

“Well, I’m – I told you. I don’t have anyone who comes over or wants to hang out.” She sounds sad. As if she tried and it went terribly every time. “Maybe – if we did our homework together you could catch up with _my_ reading since I’m a year behind you, and I would get ahead since I would help you with yours?”

She actually sounds excited at the prospect, and _no one_ should sound like that when it’s about _homework_ , but – why _not_? It makes sense, she’s _nice_ , he still doesn’t get why people don’t want to hang out with her and surely he knows no one hangs out with him because they actually _like_ him, and anyway it’s always Cersei’s friends, not _his_.

And she was – she was great, before. She certainly didn’t make him feel like an idiot for needing help with that speech, for one.

“Okay,” he agrees, “sure. Makes sense. We should totally do that.” He smiles tentatively at her, and she smiles back, and even if her teeth are not his sister’s row of pearly whites, it looks so lovely he can’t help returning it, except wider.

\--

He has to run, though, better that no one finds out he actually left without telling anyone. He accepts it when she asks him if he wants a glass of water before he leaves, and then he notices that while she’s dressed in boys’ clothes, obviously, she _does_ have a thing that’s not exactly _masculine_ on her.

“That’s nice,” he says, nodding at her neck.

“Oh,” she says, grabbing at the combination of necklaces hanging from it – it’s two separate chains, one pale gold and one silver; the gold one ends in a half of a sun, and the other in a half moon, but the two actually click together to form one single jewel. “That was – family stuff. My father gave my mom the moon necklace and he kept the half-sun, and it was the same for my grandfather and my great-grandfather. And probably another couple before then, it’s – old. You’re supposed to give a half of it to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. But Galladon says he doesn’t like either half and if he finds a girlfriend he’d like to get her a ring, so Dad gave it to me.” She shrugs. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell?” He asks, after drinking his water. “I mean, really, I don’t _know_ anyone that my sister didn’t know first.”

“I don’t know, but – some people in my grade, they bet that if one of them came up to me and told me he liked me, I’d fall for it.”

“ _What_?”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs. “I know I’m not pretty. Whatever. But they don’t need to make fun of _that_ , too, you know?”

He crosses his fingers. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

She smiles back up at him. “All right. So – see you at school?”

“You will,” he says, “I have two years’ worth of reading to catch up with.”

She accompanies him at the door. “Well, I can’t wait to get ahead of everyone else. It’s a deal.”

“It’s _totally_ a deal,” he agrees, and the last thing he had imagined was that he’d grin to himself while going back home on the day of his mother’s _funeral_ , but –

He’s never had _friends_ , not really, not any that weren’t related to him or that weren’t Cersei’s.

It’s _nice_ , he thinks. It’s really nice. And even if his mother’s not there anymore and she’s not coming back, at least something good came out of it, right?

 

2.

 

“ _What_ the hell?”

“Yeah, _Brienne_ , what the hell indeed. Now please don’t advertise the entire place, it’s loud enough already,” he says, staring pathetically into his coffee. It’d probably sound very corny if he said it’s as black as his goddamned mood right now, but it wouldn’t be too far from the truth.

“Fine,” she says, her voice dropping back down, “but this is – you said they all agreed when you told me what you were planning to do.”

“Right. They _said_ ,” he agrees, taking a sip from the cup. Shit, it tastes _so_ bitter he almost wants to cry, and so he dumps an entire packet of sugar inside it – it won’t be any less disgusting, but at least it’ll be drinkable. “Apparently Aerys’s money goes places. Shit, why didn’t you dissuade me from enlisting, again?”

She rolls her eyes, but not unkindly. “I _tried_. You said you understood my point but it was about the one thing your father couldn’t buy your way out from without you actually wanting him to.”

… Fair point. She _did_. It wasn’t her fault that by the time Jaime turned seventeen he was so _done_ with his father explaining him how _he_ had planned his future that he went and enlisted on impulse, and it surely wasn’t her fault that he ended up with a CO who was completely fucking insane, and it wasn’t her fault that he decided, along with everyone who mattered in his unit, to disobey orders the next time he ordered something _really fucking stupid_ and to denounce him for abuse of authority, on which he had a _lot_ to say. It wasn’t her fault that during the op in which he technically did that and told Aerys to go fuck himself he _also_ ended up a hand short because he took out of the line of fire one of the kids in their squad in a botched sequences of action that ended with the two of them almost dying because a landmine went off just nearby, and it wasn’t her fault that just when he was ready to press charges he found out that Aerys’s family had paid off _all_ of his op to not back him up, and they all signed for a settlement.

Everyone but _him_ , of course.

Because he was dumb enough to say that like _hell_ he was going to settle after losing one hand, spending five years with that insane asshole as CO and after having been forced to do a lot of things that were _not_ considered ethics even in war as far as the Geneva convention was concerned, and of course his father said he was on his own for _that_ and didn’t give him access to any family money to even consult any lawyer, and so now he’s without settlement, without army pay because as far as they’re concerned he was _dishonorably_ discharged, and with his brother being the only person excluding the present company who doesn’t think he did something colossally stupid in not accepting.

 _I know you,_ he said, _you’d have never settled. I wouldn’t expect it from someone who kept on complaining about the unfairness of how half of the Arthurian cycle ended._

“Right. You did. Serves me well. Now I _have_ to go work for my father after all.”

“You don’t have to –”

“Brienne, as much as you’re frankly adorable in insisting I don’t have to do anything I _don’t_ want to, I didn’t take that settlement, and I’m not accessing the family money unless my father gives me the damned authorization, which I _don’t_ , and army pay savings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. And I didn’t finish high school before leaving, or did you forget that, too?”

She turns her palms upwards in defeat. “Fair, I get it. Still –” She stops, then takes a sip from her tea, then looks up at him again. She’s cooking something up, the way she always used to when they were studying together in elementary school and she’d try to come up with some way to help him figure out how to work on his admittedly terrible handwriting – and now he’s going to have to relearn with his _left_ , fuck that sideways.

“Listen,” she says, “I don’t want to get your hopes up or anything. But – my boss.”

Right. Stannis Baratheon, the lawyer she’s interning for – he wasn’t surprised when she told him she was going to study law. She’s honestly born for that job. He wouldn’t expect anything less from someone who did spend elementary and middle _and_ high school breaking fights between idiots and making them reason.

“Yeah?”

“He – he takes pro bono cases sometimes. He’s had his number of cases concerning people related to your lovely former CO.” That drips with sarcasm, but he did Skype-call her all along while he was deployed. She knows even too well. “He’s good. I can ask him if he’d take your case.”

“What – Brienne, it’d be just _me_. It’s my word against that asshole’s. And they’ve probably paid off any witness already.”

“You haven’t met him. He’s taken more hopeless cases. If you really want to try, I can ask. At worst he refuses.”

“… Really?”

She leaves her cup be and her hand falls down, covering his – the first time it happened, years ago, she apologized immediately before she realized he doesn’t mind and never did, and actually he kind of likes it, if anything because not many other people are that casually handsy with him, and he _did_ like it, from people he knew, _before_ he almost ended up on a landmine, but his sister barely even touches him anymore and better not say anything about how she looks at his lacking right hand, his father never was generous with _that_ and about anyone else that aren’t _her_ or his brother, better stay silent.

“Listen, you did the dumbest thing you could have done when you enlisted, but I’ve seen enough of your father to know why you’d do it. Honestly, I just wish you didn’t have to lose a limb because of it, but you can’t cry over spilled milk, I guess. You deserve better than that and honestly, no one can fault you for having refused to throw gas over some poor arse you had in custody and put them on fire. I’m not trying to get a law degree because of the money and it’s only fair that you get _some_ justice out of that mess. Never mind that we’re friends, it’s not about _that_. So, should I ask him or not?”

If _one_ thing hasn’t changed in the twelve years they’ve known each other, he thinks, it’s that her thrice-darned pretty blue eyes haven’t changed at all. They’re still pretty, they still shine with righteous fury when she’s passionate about something and somehow when she’s looking at him like _that_ she can make him feel reasonably better about most things.

Well, fuck that.

“Ask him,” he tells her. “As you said, at worst he says no.”

“Good,” she smiles, taking her hand back. “And finish that food. You’ve looked like crap since you came back and I know how you get when you _feel_ like crap, too.”

“Really. What do I do?”

“You don’t look after yourself, that’s what you do, and after you scared the shit out of me that summer when you were sixteen and your sister tried to make me think that you told Ronnet Connington the family heirloom backstory I think I’ve had enough.”

 _Shit_ , that was bad, she’s right – he had done nothing of the kind, of course, he can keep a damned secret, but Brienne had also told some girl in her class she was getting friendly with and Cersei got _her_ to fess up, and she of course told Ronnet Connington, who was another arse who was in Brienne’s class and _did_ try to ask her out once just to get into her pants because of another bet.

Good thing that Brienne never bought it for a second, but before _they_ could actually talk about it Cersei had made _him_ think that Brienne _did_ buy it, which had translated in a horribly dramatic (in retrospective) week and it only died down after that little because Tyrion stepped in midway, told Brienne _why_ he was avoiding her and begged her to come over and convince Jaime to get out of his funk.

Of course he has _one_ friend and his sister had to try and fuck it up between them.

“Right. Can’t disagree with that either.” He makes an effort to eat a piece of his muffin. “And thank you,” he adds. “At least you tried.”

“Hopefully you’ll succeed. And let me know if you need anything.”

“I’m good,” he lies, because he’s _not_ and he sleeps horribly at night regardless of whatever the army psychologist prescribes him to help him with it, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Really, I am. And if this works out, I’m sure I’ll be better than that.”

She nods, apparently satisfied with it, and goes back to drinking her tea, and he can only think, _at least someone thinks I have half a chance with this entire mess of a situation._

\--

Turns out, Stannis accepts, and while he doesn’t get what he had hoped for, as in, for Aerys to get perpetually fired, at least he gets a _long_ suspension from service and Jaime gets enough money to at least get by in case he sorely needs to spend six months without working.

He still ends up at his father’s company, because what else and he do and where else would they have him, but at least he _does_ have the satisfaction of having come out of that lawsuit with a clean record.

 

3.

 

“ _What_ it is that I should do?” Jaime asks, and he wished he could say he heard wrong, but he has a feeling he’s heard right.

Entirely too much.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t heard,” his father replies, and of course he’d say _that_.

“I – I can’t,” he says, “are you _serious_?”

“Jaime, I am _always_ perfectly serious, especially when it comes to the family name.”

“The _family name_ – are we in the Middle Ages?”

“Jaime, I’m not letting you joke your way out of this. Your brother did something catastrophically stupid and I cannot tolerate –”

“… That he married our maid’s daughter?” Jaime finishes for him. “So _what_? She’s lived here for years, she’s _worked_ in her mother’s place without getting paid and we all know that, she’s a perfectly nice girl and they _like_ each other, I’m not doing this.”

“I beg your pardon, I thought it was clear that I wasn’t _asking_ you.”

Jaime thinks he can feel cold sweat trickling _all over_ the parts of his body that sweat can be produced from. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s seen his father _this_ angry, and the fact that he _summoned Jaime to his damned office_ to have this conversation says all.

“Father, I can’t –”

“You’re going to do _exactly_ as I said, and if you don’t, there’ll be consequences. Of _great_ import. Are we clear?”

He knows when a conversation’s done. Especially if it’s with his damned father. He’s had enough of them in the last five years, after all.

“Clear, _sir_ ,” he says, not even bothering to hide the venom from his voice as he utters the last word. “I will.”

“Good,” his father says. “You can leave now.”

 _Of course I can_.

Christ, he thinks as he walks out of the room, now _this_ is a goddamn mess, and he only wishes Tyrion had _warned_ him before eloping with the fair Tysha, who _actually_ likes him, and who _actually_ came up to _him_ when Tyrion tentatively made her understand he _did_ like her, and asked if it was appropriate that they could be together, and to whom he gave his heartfelt blessing because he just wanted Tyrion to be happy and she obviously liked him for _himself_ and not for his father’s money.

He – he can’t do that. If he did, he’d never feel clean in his entire damned life should he live to see a hundred, and – no.

Well, good thing that he knows a lot of things neither his father nor Cersei know, because they _don’t_ talk to Tyrion outside company-related things.

Too bad for _them._

He walks to the elevator, then out of the entire building, and then he finds a secluded spot and calls Tyrion.

“Jaime?” He asks, picking up the phone.

“Yeah, that’d be me. Listen, you won’t like what I’m about to say, but – how far are you in with that whole _buying a vineyard in Italy_ plan?”

“Uh, close enough,” Tyrion says. “The deal’s almost closed. I just have to be careful to make sure Father doesn’t find out until I’m done. Why?”

“Well, I have some advice for you.”

“Like?”

“Offer them however much money they want to close the deal _now_ , grab your pretty lady and run the fuck off to Italy within the next seven days.”

“ _What_?”

“Listen, Father just called me up to his office and informed me that it’s absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable that you married _the maid’s daughter_ , and that this marriage shouldn’t have existed in the first place. So he wants you to divorce her _now_ , and in order to convince you to do that, he wanted me to tell you that I put her up to it.”

“ _What_? He hasn’t –”

“I am under strict orders to tell you that _I_ paid her to get into your pants because I felt sorry for you or _something_ and that I had no idea she’d go as far as seducing you into marrying her.”

“But you haven’t –”

“Of course _I haven’t_ , she came up to _me_ to ask if it was appropriate that she’d want to be with you! Never mind that. I was supposed to tell you that, _and_ next Monday – well, Cersei’s in the middle of planning a smear campaign when it comes to _her_ and half of the worst trash tabloids in England are going to have her face on the cover and pondering whether she’s really a gold digger or not. I couldn’t stop that if I tried and of course she agrees, so – if you have the vineyard thing planned out, whatever he does can’t really harm you that much if you’re not here. But you have to leave. _Now._ Got that?”

For a moment, he hears nothing except his brother’s labored breathing coming from the other side of the phone. Then –

“Got that. Thank you. I – I’ll work on that. Will you see me off?”

“Sure,” Jaime says, “that’d be the least. Let me know. And – just keep everything down and if Father asks you if I talked to you, say I did and you’re taking time to act on my advice. Okay?”

“Okay. Sure. Sure, you’re right. I’ll – I’ll go call the sellers.”

“Do that,” Jaime says, and closes the call.

Well, here it goes.

He just hopes it doesn’t come to bite him in the arse _too much_ later, because he knows that it will _somewhat_.

\--

Tyrion is nothing but not efficient – he has the deal done by the next evening and tickets booked for the following day. After all, _he_ ’s worked for the company all along and he _did_ make money from it, and he also has some of their mother’s trust fund that belonged _entirely_ to him, so he probably bought it with money to spare.

And he’s turned twenty-one two months ago.

Well, at least _someone_ in the family inherited the right part of their father’s brains when it comes to making money.

He tells Jaime at what time the plane’s leaving.

Thing is – he could take a bus or a train to get to the airport. But while it’s been seven years by now, and he’s done enough therapy to _function_ , he still gets antsy in extremely crowded places especially if he doesn’t know who he’s surrounded with, and of course he’s never bothered to re-learn to drive with a prosthetic, especially because he _hates_ wearing one – he’s learned to live without for most things. Anyway, his license has expired, so he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

He calls Brienne instead, hoping she’s not with some client or at court or anything of the kind.

“Er,” he asks, “do you have anything to do tomorrow morning?”

“Wait,” she says, probably checking her agenda. “Nothing I can’t postpone. Why?”

He takes a breath. “Because my father decided to ruin my brother’s life and I informed him instead of, well, doing what my father wanted me to.”

“As in?”

“Tell him I paid Tysha to sleep with him.”

“ _What_?”

“I _know_. I totally would have been his witness at that wedding with two hours of forewarning if I had.”

And _Brienne_ had been Tysha’s – Tyrion called while they were out for a drink and asked him if he could find a second witness at short notice.

“Anyway, I told him the truth and now he’s finalized the whole vineyard thing and they’re leaving tomorrow morning without informing anyone else, and – can you drive me to the airport? The flight leaves at eleven AM so if I want to talk to him some I should be there around ten, I guess.”

“Sure,” she says immediately. “I’ll just move that meeting in the afternoon, it’s not urgent. Damn, I’ve got a client coming in about now, can we talk later for the specifics?”

“’Course, take your time. And thanks.”

“Not a problem,” she says, and he lets out a relieved breath – at least he doesn’t have to risk paying a taxi with the company-issued credit card. He doesn’t want to think his father might be checking, but knowing him, _he might_.

\--

Brienne meets him under her house the next morning – she moved, but two blocks over so she’s still near her father, so they still live nearby.

“So,” she says as he hops in and she helps him with the seatbelt (he wouldn’t let anyone else, but he’d let _her_ ), “are you already planning your next vacation in Tuscany?”

He _has_ to laugh, even if he’s really not in the best mood. “Maybe. Shit, this is going to go over _so_ badly, but at least he won’t be here to see it.”

“Hey,” she says, “you did the right thing. They looked happy when they married and she’s lovely, and they both deserve a nice life.”

“I know,” he agrees, “it’s just – the moment he’s gone it’s just going to be me, my father and my sister. I’m not relishing it, never mind that who the fuck knows what my father’s going to come up with to make sure I regret telling Tyrion. But never mind. I couldn’t have lived with it if I had gone through with it.”

“Jaime, your father’s never _not_ been an arse and we all know that.”

“Don’t you tell me,” he agrees. “Please tell me you’ve got something decent to listen to.”

She rolls her eyes. “You _can_ put on the Blind Guardian best of if you want to.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” he tells her readily, and does.

At least he’s getting to the airport listening to decent music.

\--

“Hey,” he tells Tyrion, as he sits down at the Starbucks table he had been waiting at. Tysha is somewhere with Brienne looking at some shop nearby, but it’s obvious they want them to have some time for themselves.

“Hey,” Tyrion replies. “I see you made it.”

“’Course I did. I like to see the ending of my good deeds.”

Tyrion takes a sip of his coffee and puts it back on the table. “I – did he _really_ want you to –”

“Yes,” Jaime finishes for him. “I guess he thought you’d believe it if it came from _me_.”

“Shit. I just – no, I absolutely can believe he’d do it, but – never mind. I always knew, I guess.”

“What?”

“That he only ever gave a damn about my managerial skills, when it came to me. I never thought otherwise.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaime says. “I just – I tried to reason with him, but –”

“Don’t. I mean, you _told me_. I don’t even want to know how he’ll ruin your life for it, so – thank you. I just hope you don’t regret it.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve regretted a lot of things I’ve done,” he says, “and most of them were things I did to _myself_ , and he certainly didn’t do a thing to stop me from going there. He’s already ruined your life enough, I can’t regret avoiding it. Just, keep in touch, all right?”

“Sure I will,” Tyrion says, and if his eyes might be a bit wet, Jaime pretends that he hasn’t noticed, and he drinks his coffee that Tyrion insisted to pay for. They do some more small talk, and then they call their flight – Brienne and Tysha are waiting for them outside some shop a bit farther down the hallway. Jaime stands up, feeling like he’d really like it if he could avoid the only family he has he actually has a _good_ relationship with fucking off to Italy, but it’s for the best and he knows it.

“Just – enjoy the sun and send over some wine, will you?” He asks, because it sounds less pathetic than _I wish it hadn’t come down to this_.

“Sure,” Tyrion says, “I’ll pick the best bottles specifically.”

He leans down and hugs him because fuck it to hell and back, who knows when he’ll get the chance again, and if there was one thing that _hadn’t_ stuck when it came to his father’s ideas about what men with their name do was _not being weaklings in public_ especially if it’s with Tyrion out of everyone, and then he lets go because they called the flight _again_. Tysha thanks them both and then they disappear hand in hand in the queue for getting their hand-luggage checked.

He kind of wants to cry.

And then Brienne puts a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” she says, “you did a good thing. Whatever happens after, just remember that you _did_.”

“At least someone’s agreeing with it,” he says, and doesn’t shrug her hand away. “It’s just – I’ll miss him.”

“I know,” she says, and then – “How do you feel about coming over at my place tonight? We can eat junk food and re-watch the first _Lethal Weapon_ if you let me have the first _Die Hard_.”

Like they always used to do when they were in high school, he thinks fondly. Actually, like they _always_ used to do also before then, when DVDs were a new thing and by sneaking behind his father’s back he had talked to a school counselor about his reading problem and she’d advised him to watch movies with captions, and so Brienne always used to turn captions on whenever they’d watch anything. “Yeah, that’s a deal,” he agrees, and for _now_ he feels slightly better about the incoming shitstorm.

 

4.

 

 _This is embarrassing as Hell_ , he thinks, but it’s either this or finding a hotel and fuck knows if he _can’t_ spare money now.

It’s three in the fucking morning, _damn it_ , but –

Ah, well.

They became friends over his mother’s funeral speech, she probably won’t be surprised.

He presses the button next to her name on the intercom.

“If this is a joke –” She answers a minute later.

“It’s Jaime,” he replies, “and sadly it’s not a joke. Can – can I come up?”

“What – _Jaime_? The hell – it’s three AM.”

“I know. I wouldn’t be here if it was a joke.”

The door opens a moment later. He hoists the two backpacks he brought with and grabs at his suitcase, then manages to get inside the elevator and gets off at the third floor.

She’s waiting for him on her doorstep, worried blue eyes fixed on him, and they become even _more_ worried when she realizes that not only he’s showed up at her place at three AM, he did with _baggage_.

“What the fuck,” she says.

“My father’s just kicked me out.”

“… Wait, _what_?”

He admires himself for how matter-of-fact he’s sounding. Because he really wants to _not_ sound matter-of-fact, but he has to for a matter of personal dignity.

“Well, he found out that Tyrion’s packed his bags and everything.”

“I figured, but –”

“He came into my office, asked me if I had anything to do with it, I told him the truth because what the hell, _who else_ could have done it. He had a few choice words, I answered him that the family name could go fuck himself if it meant ruining people’s lives, he ranted about how much of a disappointment I was, which _absolutely no one_ could have guessed, but until then it was all within expectations.”

“I’ll never _not_ find creepy how nonchalant can you be when it comes to your father,” Brienne scoffs, and he doesn’t want to say, _because if you have to live with him it’s either that or nothing_. So, he doesn’t.

“Don’t I know that. Anyway, he goes on and I tell him that he can say whatever he wants, I’m _not_ ruining my brother’s life because he can’t stand the idea of being related to the working class or _whatever_. So he asks me if I’m really sure that I want to die on that hill, and I tell him that at this point it’s a better hill to die on than the one I _almost_ did die on.”

“I’m sensing that the next thing you say might make me want to find someone who’ll want to press charges against his illustrious golden self, won’t it?”

“Well, he said that if it was the way things stood, then he didn’t want to see me again. _Ever_.”

“ _What_?”

“Also, that he had imagined such a conclusion, so any money from the company’s account or that I earned thanks to _him_ is currently beyond my reach. So, uhm, I realize it’s three AM and you never asked for this, but since that also means he kicked me out and I have technically nowhere to go, and when I called Cersei to ask her to make him reason she replied that it was my business and I could have just done the sensible thing and play along, so I’m not getting help there, either… just, you mind if I crash on your couch for a week or so? I mean, just as soon as I figure out –”

“Get in already,” she says, moving aside, and this time Jaime is _not_ going to joke about how cute and absolutely not befitting of someone who’s getting a name for putting the fear of a God or two into juries around London that she sleeps in shorts and a _Prince Valiant_ t-shirt in the summer, even if he does it every other time he spends the night over. She helps him with the second backpack and the suitcase as he drops the first one on the ground, and good thing that because jousting all that crap with one functioning hand only wasn’t easy.

“Thanks,” he says, “I’ll just –”

“Jaime, don’t be an idiot, just take the guest room.”

“Really, there’s no need –”

“ _Jaime Lannister_ , your damned father just _cut you off_ and I’d like to say I couldn’t have predicted that since the moment I met him, except I _could_ , and my father also could.”

“ _What_?”

“He’s been textbook saying that you were too nice for half of your family since you started coming over in the afternoons. Anyway, we’ve known each other for what, twenty years now?”

“Wow, has it been that long?”

“It _has_. Do you think I’d let you sleep on the couch? Go take a shower, I’ll make the bed.”

“What –”

“You look like shit and like you could use it. Go take that shower.”

She knows him even too well, he thinks as he steps under the shower and uses the ten minutes he spends under scalding hot water to get a damned grip on himself.

When he leaves it, he puts on some clean pjs and heads for the guest room – Brienne has indeed made the bed and left his things on the side, and at least since it’s the room where she keeps half of her books and where she put on her vintage _Twelve Monkeys_ poster, bless her undying crush on Bruce Willis, and since he’s spent more than a few nights in here at least it’s somehow familiar.

Shit.

He just can’t believe –

Never mind. He _can_. He probably had known deep inside that this would happen, and still, he can’t find it in himself to regret having sent Tyrion on his way.

He turns his back to the room and notices that the kitchen’s light is turned on. He joins Brienne inside – she’s just made some tea and she’s put a mug on the side of the table facing the door. “I figured you could use it,” she says. She’s wide awake now, and she’s looking at him worryingly – he doesn’t know what she’s expecting him to do, but nothing good, he fears. He takes the tea. She’s right. He needs it.

“Thanks,” he tells her quietly after a few sips. “I just – I should have known. But I guess I hoped he’d see reason.”

She shakes her head. “Jaime, not to be a downer on your undying optimism when it comes to your relatives, do you know what’s the first thing I thought when you told me about that funeral speech?”

“Hit me.”

“That someone who only thought about whether you could read that speech or not and not about how you were feeling was an arse. That’s what I thought _then_. After more than ten years of sporadically experiencing him, I can say for sure that he didn’t want children, he wanted trophies, and I don’t think he gives much of a damn about your opinion. He’s not worth it, and you’ve constantly proved yourself better than anyone would give you credit for given where you came from, so _no_ , he was never going to see reason, but it’s his loss if he doesn’t.”

He could answer.

Instead he drinks more of that tea lest he does something really, _really_ undignified.

“I guess you have a point,” he admits, trying to get himself together. “I just – I only ever wanted them all to get along, you know?”

She grabs her chair and moves it to his side of the table – if they’re sitting, she’s not slightly taller than he is.

“I know,” she says, her voice taking a softer intonation. “But you can’t make miracles, I guess. Maybe he’ll come around, but if he doesn’t, then you deserved better.”

He shakes his head behind the cup, trying to keep himself together. “Well, you’re good at pep talks even at four in the goddamn morning. So, are you sure –”

“Take the guest room, it’s not as if I have _that many_ guests. We can sort everything out tomorrow. By the way, since you woke me up and I doubt I can go back to sleep now, there’s a trash spaghetti western marathon on tv. You up for it?”

“I’m up for it,” he declares, figuring that at most he’ll fall asleep watching movies and it’d be _entirely_ fine with him.

They move to the sofa, and she turns the tv on, and sometime around five-thirty AM he blames his crying fit on the ending of _The Great Silence_ and not on _everything else_ going on, but it’s not the first time it happens, he figures, not in front of Brienne at least, and he doesn’t try to put up any resistance when she puts an arm around his shoulder and he ends up with his head in the crook of her neck.

\--

They wake up sometime around eleven AM – good thing it was a Saturday.

“Seems like I _did_ sleep on your sofa after all,” he groans as he leaves her warm and admittedly very comfortable side, regardless of the lack of curves.

She laughs. “Well, I’ve been awake since nine, I just didn’t want _you_ to follow me since it looked like you needed it. Listen, I’ve been thinking.”

“Good thing you were the best one at it out of the two of us.”

“Flatterer,” she says, shaking her head. She’s trying to grow out her hair again – she cut it when she was sixteen in a moment of what she had then described as utter desperation after the umpteenth time someone told her that it was ridiculous that she’d try to look more feminine keeping her hair long because it wasn’t working.

(That was Ronnet Connington, again, and Jaime might have punched him outside school grounds once. He never tried it again.)

“I was saying, you _do_ have some money saved, right?”

“Yeah, the army money. And some of that basic settlement. Why?”

“Because,” she says, “given the prices around, and given that you might need some time to get your shit back together, you can just rent me that room if you’d like. I mean, I don’t have that many people over and you’re around most of the time anyway, and I’m not offering it for free just because I know you’d go on a rant about how your family pays its debts and so on.”

“Wait, _really_?”

“Sure,” she says. “Honestly, I’ve been around you enough to know that your worst habits are nothing I can’t live with. We can have a contract down properly and everything if you’d rather pay.”

“Yeah, I _would_ ,” he says immediately. The idea of staying for free makes his stomach turn, and he thinks she _knows_ that – she was around for dinner (one of the few times she stayed over at _his_ place and not the contrary) that time his father went on a rant about how there are no free lunches in the universe and if anyone offered _them_ anything for free, there was surely a scam beneath.

“Fine. Then you can pay me the room and we can split the bills.”

“That’s – that’d be great. But how long –”

“Jaime, just stick in your head that when people do nice things for other people it doesn’t automatically come with an expiration date. No, you don’t have to answer.”

He shakes his head and doesn’t, also because he wouldn’t have a clue of what to say, but he feels lighter now, and in between _this_ piece of news and the sun filtering from the window and knowing that he doesn’t have to figure out what the hell he’s doing with his life from now on _right now_ –

Maybe his father might have slammed the door in his face, but honestly? It doesn’t hurt half as much as he had imagined it might.

Good fucking riddance, really.

 

5.

 

He doesn’t have his shit together for the next three weeks, during which he spends a sizable amount of time looking at job prospects on the internet that would _not_ require especially great reading skills – he _did_ manage to get some decent help with that _after he joined the military_ , imagine that, but at least they _did_ take him seriously when he told them, and doesn’t that say it all – and that wouldn’t make ridiculously low money because he can’t munch off paying for Brienne’s guest room with his entire settlement while using the rest to only pay his half of the bills.

That is, until one day he’s coming back from buying groceries and walks in front of this record store that looks like some kind of relic of the past – he didn’t even know there was one in the area, never mind that _some_ survived just outside a few areas, _if_ they even did. And there’s a sign outside reading that they’re looking for personnel.

For a moment, he wonders _how_ would they even make enough money to hire someone, but then his curiosity gets the best of him and walks inside, figuring that asking can’t hurt – he’s good at talking to people, sure as hell he never had a problem reading _numbers_ , it was just words, and he knows his bands. He didn’t spend half of his teenage years dragging Tyrion around Notting Hill so that he could hunt for used books and he’d hunt for records for nothing, and he was always more into music than reading, so –

 _Why the hell not_.

He walks inside.

There are two people manning the place – both gingers, though one has to be in his early forties and the other in his early thirties, and the first has a pair of impressive blue eyes ( _that have nothing on Brienne’s, though_ ) while the other is a less impressive warm brown, and after talking to the both of them for some ten minutes, he finds out: that they actually get by because other than owning the shop they produce bands locally and they rent a recording studio in the back, so they make enough money to actually keep the place open, that the one with blue eyes is named Brynden and the other Jon and they’re _definitely_ partners or something because it’s obvious from the way they move around each other (and fine, maybe the rainbow sticker outside the door could have given him a clue), and they’re looking for someone to only man the record store because their current guy has finally managed to woo the girl of his dreams – a regular client _and_ singer of one of those bands they produce – but she’s moving to Spain because that’s where she found a label, so he’s going with her.

“I take that you’re interested?” Brynden asks Jaime.

“Try me,” he replies. “I think I’d be a good fit.” If anything, he always knew how to sell himself.

They try him.

Half an hour later, they’re both impressed and they’re telling him that hey, no one else applied until now, does he want to know the conditions?

The pay is more than acceptable, the hours are good, the place is _nice_ and when one of them recognizes the name they are immediately sympathetic to his plight – _all that crap in the Daily Mail didn’t sound legit_ , Jon had muttered before specifying that he _didn’t_ read the Daily Mail, his aunt does, and isn’t that horrible that you can’t choose your relatives? – and so at least he knows they have no issues with _him_ working for them or anything.

Not that his father would care, he figures.

So, he says that’s good for him.

Six months later, he _definitely_ has his shit together – he’s getting paid, he’s getting by doing most of the work one-handed and when he can’t he wears the damn prosthesis but it’s not so bad if it’s not _always_ on, he likes it well enough and both his bosses make jokes all the time about finally getting new female clientele. And it’s true because he gets a lot of flirting thrown his way, and he flirts back because it’s _clients_ , but –

Truth is, he’s kind of coming to terms with a thing he never quite let himself admit until he was _living with Brienne_ and he has a feeling that he never wanted to admit to himself that he _was_ attracted to her and has been for a while because she’s the only friend he has and honestly, given that his track record with girlfriends or anything of the kind has limited itself to flings in high school because he didn’t want the poor girls to have their lives ruined should his father or his sister decide they weren’t worthy of the name. Hell, Cersei about ruined the life of this friend of hers in _middle school_ who gave him a Valentine’s Day card and he remembers that even too well – the poor girl was even cute and he had been fine with receiving it, and at the end of the year she had to change schools for how bad it had gotten.

(He hadn’t talked to Cersei for a month after that, but it hadn’t really yielded many results. Sadly.)

So, anyway, he always was careful to never even go there even if he stopped finding her unattractive a long time ago – for a while, it just was _her_ and the way she looked like and it was fine because he _knew_ her and who even cares. Whenever it happened, he has no idea because the Tysha treatment was exactly the last thing he wanted for her, _especially_ when she’s a lawyer and the last thing she needs is someone tarnishing her reputation.

But now –

Now that he knows they wouldn’t make horrible roommates, all the contrary, and that he’s seen her early in the morning and late at night and at every moment in between, and when he’s known how she feels pressed up against him because they did fall asleep against each other on the couch more than once, and that he’s had plenty of chances to see her going around in shorts showing off those long, muscular legs of hers, and that he _knows_ he’s been thinking she has astonishingly pretty eyes for _years_ , well – he can’t exactly deny it to himself much longer.

Except that they’re _friends_ and she’s about the only person in his life who hasn’t bailed on him yet, and he’s plenty sure that she’s _not_ interested in dating anyone, or at least so she proclaimed after some failed date with some guy from a different firm – then again, given that she’s gone through the whole assholes-betting-on-whether-she’d-fall-for-them charade more than once and he’s been there cheering her up for _all_ of them, he can imagine why. So he figures he’ll keep it to himself, and if sometimes he glances at her sun and moon necklace hanging on her neck, both still neatly fitting together, he thinks that at least no one else has been given one of those halves.

Whoever it is will be a lucky man, if he ever manages to see past _typical attractiveness_ , as if it’s anything people should give a fuck about.

Anyway, this evening she should be home late, she had a hearing in court, so he figures he’ll order in some Chinese from her favorite place, and he’s doing just that when someone knocks on the door.

He’s _entirely_ surprised to see Cersei standing there.

“Cersei,” he tells her, without letting her in. “Fancy seeing you around.”

“This is not a social visit,” she replies, sending him a look that would have sent reeling someone who hasn’t been at the receiving end of it since they could remember.

Good thing he _has_ been there.

“Right,” he says. “You could have called.”

She looks at his t-shirt – it has the record shop’s logo on it – with disdain. “I see you’re at the last straw, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been doing pretty good for myself. It doesn’t make the money Father assures, no doubt, but it’s way less stressful and I’m better at it. So, if it’s not a social visit, why are you here and not planning your wedding?”

She scoffs. “Ah, so you’d _know_ about that.”

“Of course I do. It’s on every newspaper. I hope Robert Baratheon makes you happy,” he shrugs. “There’s less attractive people around.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she says.

“What, to invite me? Thanks, Father wouldn’t appreciate and I don’t think I would either.”

“No,” she says, “I need you to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

For a moment, he thinks he’s heard wrong. “Cersei, you _agreed_ to it. It’s _two days from now_. You’ve been dating him from way before you tried to fuck up Tyrion’s life, _why_ would you bail?”

She shrugs. “I might’ve found out something.”

“As in?”

“That he’s never gotten over his _previous fiancé_ , for one.”

Oh, shit, that was _another_ story that was pure gossip material a year ago or so. “Cersei, he _will_. Lyanna Stark had a damned kid with Aerys’s damned son, imagine that, and the fact that they decided to get back together ten years later seems pretty _definitive_ to me. And it’s always been for financial reasons and everyone knows it, so what the hell do _I_ have something to do with it?”

“Well, we needed this merging just because _both_ you and Tyrion left.”

“And so what? Maybe because _he_ left. Sure as hell _he_ brought the earnings, I was in fucking PR and you know it.”

“But if _you_ hadn’t, we wouldn’t have needed it for _image_ , and –”

“Cersei, for – don’t try to dump on _me_ the responsibility for whatever’s wrong with you or Father or the company when everything I did was doing the decent thing and _not_ ruin people’s lives.”

“Well, anyway, it’s not like I particularly want to marry him.”

“Fine. Call it off.”

“Father is going to murder me if I do and you know that. But if you came back, he would be more well-disposed.”

“So _I_ should sacrifice my pretty decent life to apologize for having _not_ ruined my brother’s life? Cersei, if you want to _talk_ and mend things and whatever, fine, I’m willing. But that’s about it.”

“So what, you’d just let me –”

“Cersei, it’s _your_ damned life, not _mine_ , and good thing I grasped that concept when what was her name, _Melara_ , gave me that Valentine’s Day card and you about made her so miserable she almost had a nervous breakdown when she was _twelve_. You accepted that marriage, it’s your bloody problem.”

“That’s the problem, you don’t _get_ it!”

“I don’t get what?”

“ _Why_ do you think I’d have done that, and it wasn’t half as bad as you say it was?”

 _It was_ , he thinks. He remembers even too well.

“I don’t know, because she also was too low for the likes of our surname?”

“No, for _this_ ,” she says, and then she moves closer and her hands go to his face and they pull his head down and –

For a single second, as her lips meet his, he thinks, _now I understand a lot of things,_ because of course she’d hate _someone else_ to give him a Valentine’s card, and then he thinks, _thank fuck I never let anyone think that Brienne was more than a friend –_

The moment the thought crosses his mind, he pushes Cersei back enough that she has to take a few steps towards the elevator while he runs his wrist over his mouth.

 _Fuck._ Did she really –

“What the hell,” he says.

“Well, now you know,” she replies, shrugging. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Fuck’s sake, well, I don’t really think –”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about that,” she smiles ever so slightly, and he feels like he did back in his mother’s burial chamber. He thinks he wants to throw up.

“No,” he says, “ _no_ , I haven’t, and if you think I’d come back to convince Father to say no to this farce of a marriage to just stand on the side and having some kind of secret thing going on with you, then you really need to talk to someone who’d not disclose that information.”

“… What?”

“Cersei, _no_. Whatever it is that you think, _no_. I’m sorry if that marriage is not what you want but _I_ am not your way out of it.”

She stares at him, and he stares back, and fuck, he hopes Brienne _doesn’t_ get here while Cersei is still standing in front of him or it could get ugly.

“Really?” She asks, her voice suddenly sounding _very_ detached.

“Really,” he holds his ground. Shit. Shit, he can’t believe that she wanted _that_ all long, fuck –

“Fine,” she says, “then you’re not invited to the wedding. And whatever Father told you when he kicked you out, the same is valid for me.”

For a moment, he feels like someone did punch him in the guts. “Cersei –” He starts, because even with _that_ , up until she actually closed the distance between them he had hoped they could mend things one day because she’s his twin and you can’t just ignore that by blinking and he’s grown up with her for better or worse, but –

“You took your decision,” she says. “Enjoy your _decent_ life.” He has rarely heard so much contempt drip from anything she’s said, and she’s never been a stranger to it, he thinks as she turns her back on him and goes down the stairs.

For a moment, he stands there without being able to do anything.

Then his lunch comes back up and he runs towards the bathroom.

\--

“What the hell happened?” Brienne asks as she finds him still sitting on the bathroom’s tiles – he hasn’t found the strength to get up.

He sighs. “My sister showed up.”

“ _What_?”

“Asking me to apologize to my father so he’d end up in a good mood and he’d agree with calling off her wedding.”

“For real?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s never felt more tired in his life. “I said no, obviously. Then she tried to convince me further.”

“ _Further_?”

He thinks, _should I tell her_?

He forces to stand up. If anything, he wants to say it while he’s _not_ sprawled on the bathroom floor. He drinks some water and rinses enough times to get rid of the taste in his mouth.

“Listen, it got ugly. If you don’t want to know –”

“Jaime, I think I’ve _seen_ Lannister-level ugly in the last twenty years. What did she do?”

“Assume that I was just waiting to make out with her.”

“ _What_?”

“She kissed me,” he shrugs. “Apparently, _that_ was the reason she sabotaged any relationship I might have had with a woman except _you_ , because she thought that we were just friends and I wouldn’t be into _you_ like that, never mind that she _did_ try once and it backfired.”

“Christ,” she says, “are – are you alright?”

“I threw up my entire lunch, I doubt it. Then again, she said we’re done, so.”

“ _Done_?”

“Yeah. The same way I am with my father, I guess.”

“So she came in, decided you were responsible for everything that went wrong in her life, tried to kiss you and then left hoping you’d feel bad about it?”

“… I see that you always have the situation very clear,” he jokes.

“Well, she _did_ come to me a month after your mother’s funeral.”

“ _What_?”

She shrugs. “I never told you because I didn’t want to – I mean, she’s your _sister_. It’d have looked like I was trying to pit the two of you against each other. Anyway, she walked up to me and told me a fair number of horrid things that were supposed to discourage me from keeping up our study dates, but I didn’t take the bait. And then she said that whatever I thought I was doing she’d always come first and I replied something like, I wouldn’t expect it not to if you’re his family, and then she left. I thought it was weird but that maybe she was possessive or something of the kind, back then. Now – well, it takes an entire new light,” she says, sounding disturbed. “But – never mind. Are you all right?”

“As much as I can be,” he shrugs. “Besides, she was wrong.”

“About what?” She asks, and then he realizes _what_ he just accidentally said.

“Uh, nothing –”

“Jaime, spit it out. You’ve just told me your _sister_ has issues she should really see some good therapist for at almost thirty and she apparently had them at _eight_ , what else could be worse?”

He has to laugh some at that – fair point. “Two things,” he says. “She was wrong that she’d always come first. She hasn’t for a while,” he admits, and he doesn’t even want to count _for how long_. “And she was wrong about not trying much harder to ruin things for you and me because you weren’t a threat, I guess.”

He’s not quite looking at her, but then he _has_ to the moment her hand suddenly touches his face and forces him to look up at her.

“What have you just said?”

“That – well. I – I didn’t really let myself embrace it until very recently for _that exact reason_ , and because you don’t need my father to ruin your life and so on, but you – might be a threat. In _that_ sense. Actually, scratch the _might_. You are –”

“If you’re meaning _anything_ other than what I’m understanding,” Brienne tells him, “it’s the one time I kick you out for real because I’d never survive the embarrassment,” and then she moves her other hand to the other side of his face and now _she_ ’s kissing him and for a moment he’s too stunned to kiss back and when he wants to she’s leaning back already.

“I – I meant _exactly that_ ,” he says, and why is he sounding like he just ran a marathon?

Probably because he _feels_ like he’s just finished running one, all things considered.

“Good,” she says, sounding _relieved_ , and – wait, _relieved_?

“Wait, since _when_ –”

“The third time you punched someone for fucking with me might’ve been the charm, but it’s not like I thought you’d ever – I mean, I knew we were _friends_ , but –” Suddenly her cheeks are blushing crimson under the freckles sprawled across them, and _fuck_ but he wants to kiss her for real, except –

“Brienne, you know what, I think I should brush my teeth _very_ thoroughly before showing you how exactly _wrong_ that notion is, and then we can discuss of how fucking stupid we have been and do the math of how much time we missed, should we?”

“I – yes,” she agrees, “I think it’s a _very_ good idea.”

\--

He runs to the bathroom, brushes his teeth _thrice_ because the last thing he wants is starting _this_ while his mouth tastes like damned vomit out of everything, and when he walks out of the door and into her bedroom he wonders, _what if she thought back on it_ –

But she’s sitting on the bed, undoing her jacket and letting her now shoulder-length hair fall down in a soft wave that wasn’t there when she was younger but looks plenty fine on her now, and a moment later he’s grabbed the back of her neck, feeling the two chains at the back of it, and kissed her without hesitation exactly like he’s been thinking of doing for weeks, and she’s kissing him back like she’s wanted to for _years_ , her lips opening under his immediately and without hesitation, and _fuck,_ he knows she’s kissed a few of those assholes she tried dating and that always ended up badly so he’s not her first, even if he wishes he was –

But it doesn’t really matter because as he draws her closer she moans a little inside his mouth and she’s grabbing at his back with enough strength that he can barely move and fuck if he _doesn’t_ want to, not right _now._

He thinks, that maybe they’ve been idiots for a long time, but –

But he can’t wait to make up for it.

In all the possible ways.

 

 

+1.

 

 

“It’s nine in the morning and your brother’s waiting for you in one hour, if you have forgotten.”

 _What_?

He blinks his eyes open, looking out of the window – well, _damn_. The sun’s high, but not too much, and the air coming in from the window is warm, not that he’d doubt that since it’s _Italy_ in _June_. Damn, now he knows why Tyrion picked this place to live – it hasn’t rained once since they set foot here, the weather is lovely and even when it’s hot it still beats rain and cold and fog and _rain_. Good thing they’re here for another couple of weeks, and patience if he barely has vacation time left for the rest of the year. It’s totally worth it.

He moves his eyes from the green vines sprawling outside his window and the golden earth they’re digging into and turns towards Brienne, who’s standing near the bed in the room Tyrion gave them assuring that it was the nicest in the entire place with –

“Wow,” he says, “what did I deserve to have breakfast in bed now?”

Her mouth quirks in a small grin as she hands him the tray. “I was feeling nice today,” she says, “and you’ve had a busy month. Given that you’re even a pro at budgeting now, I figured some spoiling wouldn’t go amiss _for once_.”

“And here I was thinking that I could get adjusted to it,” he laughs, grabbing the tray and making space for her on the bed and thinking of the night before – they _definitely_ had fun, didn’t they? And fine, he hadn’t slept _too_ well at least just after they were laying spent down on the bed with her hand running through his hair, and he’s fairly sure at some point he woke up from darned unpleasant dream about his mother _and_ his sister _and_ his father at once, but then he did go back to sleep without too many problems. He glances at the contents of the tray – there’s some orange juice, a small espresso cup and a croissant, as in, what Tyrion declared the _one_ thing they could have in _his_ place. Two years here might have turned him into a local, Jaime figures, but it’s not a bad look on him, nor on Tysha, and espresso _is_ admittedly more to his taste than regular coffee.

“Don’t,” she says, “it’s a special occasion.” She sits down next to him, and he realizes she feels slightly tense.

“Uh, is everything all right?” He asks her.

“Sure it is,” she replies, maybe a bit too quickly.

“I’ve known you for too long and I’m fairly sure you’re lying,” he says.

“Just – have breakfast and we can discuss it.”

He only hopes it’s nothing bad, but – while she looks _nervous_ , she doesn’t look like she has bad news.

“… You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

At that, she stops being tense and laughs out loud, shaking her head, and he kind of _really_ likes that _he_ always could get a laugh out of her when it always was some of the merchandise she always was more loathe to dispense freely.

“No, you asshole,” she tells him, “I’d have told you if I was, and I’m on bloody birth control. Just have breakfast, won’t you?”

He shrugs and figures he’ll just do it – he drinks the juice, eats the croissant (she even got him that kind with honey he likes but that the nearest bar that delivers here almost never has and he wonders if she actually drove into town for it, which she _could_ have done), and then he picks up the espresso cup to drink it at once as he usually does when it’s cooled enough –

And then he almost lets it fall to the ground because there was something _weird_ about it when he picked it up, and he hadn’t realized that it was _the two halves of her mother’s necklace_ nestled inside the tiny plate under the cup.

He closes his eyes and opens them again. They’re still there.

“Fuck,” he blurts, and then, “that wasn’t what I was going to say.”

She’s still laughing, but now a bit of nervousness is coming back to her posture. “It was sincere,” she says, “I don’t mind. But – well. That’s it, actually.”

“What’s _it_?”

“What I was worried about,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, I’m fairly sure you’ll say yes or I wouldn’t have gone for it, but of course if you think it’s too soon –”

 _You’re supposed to give a half of it to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with_ , she had told him a hell of a long time ago, and wait a moment –

“Brienne, am I doing the math wrong or _this_ is the day we – oh. Hell. The anniversary is tomorrow, of course it is.”

“You’re not,” she tells him, sounding so fond she could burst with it, “and I think you remember what these are supposed to stand for.”

“Of course I do, I’m not completely –”

“Then if you want me to _stop_ being nervous about this you can just either pick one or tell me I should try again a couple years from now or _something_ , but since we’ve lived together long enough and I’m fairly sure that after I’ve known you _this long_ there’s quite nothing that could make me think back on it, I figured –”

“Brienne?” He interrupts her, feeling like _he_ could burst with fondness now, “I got it. You can stop that.”

“Oh. Okay. So?”

He looks down at the two chains. From what she’s told him, her mother had the moon half, and her grandmother before her, but he _knows_ she prefers the other one, or that since her father used to wear it and obviously _he_ raised her she probably likes it best for that reason, and honestly, he’s worn enough gold in his life when he had to dress up for company business.

He leans down and picks the moon half. “That said,” he says, “I think you should do this properly.”

“ _Properly_?”

“You ever heard of people putting on their own rings?”

She rolls her eyes and then moves the tray to the other side of the bed, her legs framing his hips and moving on top of him – she grabs the sun necklace and puts it back around her neck, then holds a hand out. He lets his own chain fall into her hand and then moves back his head so she can close the clasp behind his neck, letting it finally fall over his chest.

He glances down at it. “You know what,” he says, “it looks good on me, I think. Better than it had on you.”

“It does,” she agrees, and then leans down just a fraction. “So,” she says, “just to be sure, what’s the full answer to, _will you marry me_?”

“I’d marry you _tomorrow_ ,” he replies, not minding how his heartbeat has just sped up, “but I’m afraid finding a judge would be a problem.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to wait, same as your brother.”

“What –”

She grabs her phone. “I told him I might have to do this today. He said that if you accepted he’d show you around properly in the afternoon. So, I think I’ll tell him he should postpone his plans, and _then_ we can celebrate.”

“I think you should do that _right now_ ,” he replies, and she waits for her to send Tyrion a text and then put the phone away on the nightstand.

“Done,” she says, and now she even _sounds_ as giddy as he feels. “Oh, and by the way, I had it in plans already, but then I heard you tonight.”

“You – what did I even say?” He barely remembers at this point – he’s got better things to think about.

“A lot of things,” she says vaguely, “but never mind. I need you to hear me out a moment.”

“All right. About what?”

“Jaime, I don’t know about anyone else, but I think I’m not going anywhere. Got that?”

There are a lot of things he could say right now, but they wouldn’t really make justice to how he’s feeling and how he had underestimated things before, _now_ he feels like he could burst for how _happy_ he feels, and so he just says, “Got that,” and as she brings a hand around his neck and meets him halfway and kisses him with enough fervor that the bed creaks, he can only think –

He can only think that he believes every word of it.

 

 

End.


End file.
